2013 NCAA tournament rankings by SAT scores

For the second year in a row, I answer the question on everyone’s mind: What if the NCAA men’s tournament teams had to submit their school’s freshman SAT scores (not just those of basketball players) to get their seeding?

With some help from The College Board, common data sets, and in one case, Cappex, I figured it out. Of course, Harvard would be the No. 1 seed overall, followed by Duke and Notre Dame . From then on, it gets a little congested. Below is a ranking of the overall 68-team tournament field based on standardized test scores.

The methodology here is very simple and not especially refined. I use the midpoints of a school’s 25-75 percentile Math and Verbal scores and add them (since not all schools report writing scores). For those (Midwestern) schools that rely more heavily on the ACT, I converted ACT to SAT scores.

Inside Higher Ed has set up its own brackets based on academic progress statistics for NCAA tournament teams: Butler, Belmont, Memphis, and Kansas make the Final Four, and Belmont wins. Check it out.